No FLOCK Act: Congress Targets License Plate Cameras

No FLOCK Act: Congress Targets License Plate Cameras as Lawmakers Threaten Highway Funding

What Is the No FLOCK Act and Why Does It Matter

A bipartisan pair of U.S. lawmakers plans to introduce legislation that would condition a slice of federal highway money on whether states restrict the use of Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers. The proposal, described to WIRED ahead of its introduction, carries the name No FLOCK Act—an acronym for Federal License-Plate Observation and Camera Keeping. Its core mechanism is financial: states that decline to ban the devices outside a narrow set of permitted uses would forfeit 10 percent of the annual federal support they receive for highways, roads, and bridges.

The bill's significance lies less in its dollar figure than in the precedent it sets. Washington has long attached strings to transportation funding, using the promise of federal dollars to push states toward a national drinking age, a 21-year minimum purchase age for alcohol, and lower blood-alcohol limits for drivers. Withholding money to shape state surveillance policy would extend that leverage into a domain where courts and legislatures have only begun to draw lines.

Automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, have spread across the country with little uniform oversight. Flock Safety has become the most visible vendor in that market, marketing camera networks to local police departments, homeowners associations, and private businesses. Industry estimates and civil liberties research suggest thousands of U.S. jurisdictions have adopted some form of ALPR, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have both documented how quickly a system sold for one narrow purpose can be repurposed for another. Those audits, built on public records requests from departments nationwide, provide the factual backbone for the concern driving the bill: the power to log every passing plate is easy to expand and hard to unwind.

How Congress Plans to Enforce the Ban Through Highway Funding

The enforcement mechanism runs through the Department of Transportation. Under the No FLOCK Act, the secretary of transportation would be directed to withhold 10 percent of the annual financial support due to a state for highways, roads, and bridges if that state fails to prohibit Flock and similar devices except in five enumerated situations. The structure mirrors a familiar template in federal law: rather than regulating local police conduct directly—a power Congress lacks—lawmakers make federal money contingent on state policy choices.

That design has practical consequences. States that rely heavily on federal transportation dollars would face immediate pressure to pass enabling statutes, while those with their own revenue streams might absorb the loss. The 10 percent threshold is calibrated to sting without crippling: enough to force a legislative debate in statehouses, not so much that it invites a broad backlash from governors and transportation departments. The bill also shifts the site of conflict. Instead of courts deciding what a police department may do with a camera network after a lawsuit, state legislatures would have to define permitted uses in advance.

The approach echoes earlier conditional-funding regimes, including the federal mandate that tied a portion of highway money to a national minimum drinking age and the withholding provisions used to enforce speed-limit and impaired-driving standards. Each of those programs drew objections about federal coercion, and each survived politically because the conditions were framed as public-safety measures. Whether surveillance limits can travel the same path is the open question the No FLOCK Act will test.

Bipartisan Support: Krishnamoorthi and Cloud's Shared Concerns

Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat representing Chicago suburbs, and Michael Cloud, a Republican whose Texas district includes Corpus Christi, are cosponsoring the bill. The pairing is notable. Krishnamoorthi and Cloud sit on opposite sides of most policy fights, and their alliance reflects a rare convergence: conservatives wary of a surveillance apparatus that can track gun owners, churchgoers, and political gatherings, and progressives alarmed by the potential for immigration enforcement, abortion-related investigations, and racial profiling.

That coalition has appeared before on privacy issues, where concerns about government data collection cut across ideological lines. Few domestic policy areas now produce agreement between a Chicago-area Democrat and a Gulf Coast Republican. The No FLOCK Act's sponsors appear to be betting that the shared skepticism is durable enough to move a bill through a divided Congress—or at minimum to force a public debate.

The Growing Backlash Against Automated License Plate Readers

The legislation lands amid a nationwide backlash that has been building for months. Flock cameras, which help police track the location of vehicles tied to crimes, have become the subject of mounting criticism over more nefarious uses by officers. Reports of misuse have fueled city council fights, contract cancellations, and state-level bills across the country.

Civil liberties organizations have been central to that push. The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have documented cases in which ALPR data was queried for personal reasons, shared across jurisdictional lines, or retained far longer than policies promised. Those documented misuse patterns—not hypothetical risks—have given lawmakers concrete examples to cite. The EFF has argued that plate-reader networks function as a form of mass location tracking, because a sufficiently dense camera grid can reconstruct a vehicle's movements over time, revealing where a person lives, works, worships, and protests.

The backlash has also exposed a governance gap. Many departments adopted the technology through procurement decisions rather than public votes, leaving residents unaware of the scale of local deployment until journalists and advocacy groups requested records. That gap is precisely what the No FLOCK Act seeks to close by forcing states to legislate.

What Uses Would Be Prohibited Under the No FLOCK Act

Under the bill, Flock cameras and comparable devices could be used only for five purposes: enforcing toll systems, identifying stolen vehicles, locating missing or endangered persons, finding vehicles registered to people with a warrant for a felony offense, and investigating a vehicle involved in a felony offense. Anything else would run afoul of the federal condition.

The list is deliberately narrow, and what it omits is as telling as what it includes. Notably absent are uses such as conducting traffic studies and other routine administrative applications—categories that departments and vendors have cited to justify broad deployment. The permitted uses share a common feature: each is tied to a specific, articulable law-enforcement purpose rather than general monitoring. Toll enforcement is transactional. Stolen-vehicle and missing-person searches are reactive. The felony provisions require a predicate—a warrant or an active investigation—before a plate can be run.

Critics of ALPRs have long argued that the real risk is not any single query but the accumulation of data. A system limited to five use cases still generates a historical record of every vehicle that passed a camera. The bill addresses use, not retention. How states implement it—whether they mandate deletion schedules, audit trails, and penalties for misuse—will determine whether the five-use limit is meaningful or merely a labeling exercise.

Implications for States, Law Enforcement, and Civil Liberties

For states, the bill creates a decision point with a fiscal price tag. Legislatures would need to pass statutes defining permitted ALPR uses or watch 10 percent of their federal highway support disappear. That trade-off will play out differently in a state that has already restricted the technology than in one where departments have embraced it. Law enforcement agencies, meanwhile, would face a patchwork: a camera network lawful under state law could still expose the state to federal withholding if its policies fall short of the bill's five-use standard. Vendors such as Flock would confront a compliance environment in which their customers must certify that deployments match a federal list.

For civil liberties advocates, the bill is a welcome but partial step. It targets the most visible category of surveillance—cameras mounted on poles and trailers—without addressing the broader ecosystem of data brokers, private camera networks, and interagency sharing agreements that make ALPR data valuable in the first place. The ACLU and EFF have consistently argued that use restrictions must be paired with retention limits, audit requirements, and notice to the public. The No FLOCK Act supplies the first element and leaves the rest to the states.

The deeper question is whether Congress can govern surveillance through the purse. Highway funding has shaped state behavior on drinking ages and speed limits, but those policies were national in scope and enjoyed broad public support. Restricting police technology is more contested. The No FLOCK Act will force that contest into the open—in committee rooms, statehouses, and city councils—where the answer will be written one jurisdiction at a time.

Source: Ars Technica - All content